Giving Color The Green Light, Backstage At Giorgio Armani

This season, makeup artist Linda Cantello categorized the Armani woman as “delicate” and the “antithesis of the Prada lady,” which, funnily enough, was one of the few other shows to employ a bold use color on the lids for Spring 2014. The face painter’s approach, however, was less about women in revolt and more focused on creating a “passive” femininity on the runway. And while the underlying theme of the collection was Jardin Majorelle, she grappled with the choice between purple and green (not blue, which would have been too obvious a choice) to pick up on the amethyst and anemonelike tones in the clothes. In the end, a gentle wash of emerald won out. “Mr. Armani was very specific that it shouldn’t be too green—he wanted it to have a diaphanous, photo-transparent [quality],” she explained.

After priming skin with a BB cream to eliminate redness or any lingering effects of summer (i.e., a tan), she used Giorgio Armani Beauty Maestro Foundation to create the “pale perfection” requested by the designer. Complexions were then dusted with powder for a matte—but still luminous—finish. The alluring malachite shade wrapped around lids was a combination of sea foam and slightly deeper jade pigments (inspired by a Sarah Moon image from the seventies that was pinned to Cantello’s mirror). For translucency and the “essence of speed,” she mixed the eye shadow with Fluid Sheer in 2, the lightest hue in the range of radiance boosters. The formula was initially applied with a brush along the crease, outer corners, and lower lash lines, but Cantello used her finger to blend it out and down. To cancel dark shadows, a concealer was dotted on the inner corners of the eyes and a light stain was tapped onto lips to make the girls “look more healthy than dead.”

In contrast to the gentle makeup, the hair by Franco Gobbi was a bit more aggressive. There was certainly an eighties reference, illustrated by the side-swept waves (similar to the swoop seen at Emilio Pucci), and the length was pinned up off the neck to resemble an undercut. To finish, strands were misted with hair spray to lock in the fluffy texture. While I’m not entirely sold on this particular swoosh, Cantello’s gauzy shadow makes being green look absolutely gorgeous.